Monday, 5 May 2014

Pre-production Stage

After we got our tutors approval, we started to plan the budget and the team
members required to travel to India. We agreed that three persons only can go
to India: I as a director, production manager and sound technician, Omran as a
producer, a film researcher and an interpreter and my colleague Marius as a cinematographer.
We estimated the budget as 3000 sterling pound to cover the cost of vaccines for
the three of us and getting the visas as well as tickets, accommodation and
food for the period of our stay in India which is three weeks!, that is because
I need enough time to choose an interesting and suitable person for our film. I
also need to study this person before starting to shoot the film and decide
what I want to shoot from this blind person as well as studying his place of
living. We must first search for good shots to take for him and determine a
complete list of these shots before starting.

We tried to get support from
companies or charities that help the blind but in vain so we thought to present
our idea on “Kickstarter” web site and ask for support from all those who like
our idea and its noble message to show the life of misery those people live. We
made a short video in which we present the idea and objective of the film, we
also explained where the costs are utilized, and hence we wrote the plan and
its ideas completely. We start to publish this in our page on Facebook, twitter
and whatsApp to get financial support from our people and friends. The idea was
applauded from all. Actually, we could collect all the amount of fund needed at
the exact time. We started to prepare for our travel, got the tickets, bout
vaccines and other equipments. We got all what we want from the university loan
store. Unfortunately, the university did not provide us with specific equipment
like special lenses we use to shoot wide landscapes. I discussed this matter
with my colleague the cinematographer who assured that the university does not
usually provide such things. We decided to hire lenses from outside the
university and on our account, not that the department manager offered to give
us financial support to buy the lenses. The cost of the lenses was too high to
buy so we decided to hire them from India, we searched for them on the internet
and could find them and discovered that we would save a lot of money by hire
them from India.

The day of travel has come and we
were enthusiastic and eager to start work. We had lots of questions like what
may we face there? , how the experience will be? What is India like? We took
the plane full of hope and enthusiasm!